Overview: he Fight Over Minneapolis’ ShotSpotter Microphones
Contributing writer Ella Stern breaks down the impending city audit of ShotSpotter, Minneapolis’ controversial gunshot detection system. Stern examines the clash between city council members demanding financial accountability and community safety solutions, police advocates praising the tech, and research showing Black and Indigenous residents bear the brunt of local surveillance.
Minneapolis is the only locality in Minnesota that uses ShotSpotter, microphones that aim to detect gunshots and reduce gun violence. Critics have raised concerns about discriminatory policing and surveillance, and have questioned the technology’s effectiveness. Next month, the Minneapolis city auditor will release an independent analysis of ShotSpotter, examining how well it actually keeps the city safe.
A Divided City Council Reins in Contract
In anticipation of the audit, the Minneapolis City Council unanimously extended the city’s contract with ShotSpotter’s parent company, SoundThinking, for one year rather than the proposed three. The council also denied a proposed expansion into Wards 9 and 10, siding 8-4 with Ward 9 Council Member Jason Chavez and Ward 10 Council Member Aisha Chughtai, who opposed it. Both votes took place June 25.
Minneapolis has used ShotSpotter for about 20 years. The microphones, whose exact locations aren’t public, are stationed in North and South Minneapolis. They constantly monitor for gunshot-like noises and use GPS to pinpoint locations; when triggered, they send audio to a review center, where workers alert police if they believe the sound was a gunshot. SoundThinking says the microphones can detect a gunshot in as little as one minute.
Racial Disparities in Surveillance Zones
Black and Native residents of Minneapolis are 3.3 times more likely to live in areas with ShotSpotter technology than white residents, according to research by Alexander Lindenfelser, a University of Minnesota Law School graduate and law clerk.
“When responding to a ShotSpotter activation, police are more likely to believe they are entering a dangerous situation in a dangerous neighborhood,” Lindenfelser said, presenting his research to the city council’s Administration & Enterprise Oversight Committee in March 2024. “Police interactions… have the potential to escalate in ways that damage community trust.”
Proactive Safety Tool or Wasted Millions?
City Council Member LaTrisha Vetaw, who represents Ward 4, said the areas in North Minneapolis with ShotSpotter are the ones that have struggled most with gun violence. She said police have used the technology to identify weapon types, including automatic weapons with switches, and to locate shooting hotspots.
“Gun violence is an issue that we’re dealing with, and ShotSpotter is a tool in helping us to deal with that,” Vetaw said. “The area I represent doesn’t see ShotSpotter as discriminatory… in Ward 4, people see it as a proactive measure.”
Council Member Robin Wonsley questioned whether the technology has actually improved conditions in the communities it’s meant to serve.
“MPD’s own data has shown that they have not effectively reduced gun violence in those communities [while contracting with SoundThinking],” Wonsley said, noting Minneapolis has had among the country’s worst case closure rates for homicides and non-fatal shootings over the past 12 years.
“We spent millions of dollars in a decades-long partnership with this company. It’s clear it warrants reinvestigation of whether we could be spending our money elsewhere.”
St. Paul, which doesn’t use ShotSpotter, recently reported 100% case closure on non-fatal shootings after launching a non-fatal shooting task force; when the city considered ShotSpotter in 2019, then-Mayor Melvin Carter rejected it as a “toy.”
Wonsley said Minneapolis’ own non-fatal shooting task force increased case closures by 30% in its first three months.
“The city will say that we need ShotSpotter to accompany our non-fatal task force,” Wonsley said. “St. Paul shows otherwise.”
Other cities that have dropped ShotSpotter cite high false positive and false negative rates. A Star Tribune analysis of Minneapolis’ 2022 911 dispatch data found that in about 70% of 4,100 police responses to ShotSpotter activations, officers found no physical evidence of a shooting.
Privacy Concerns, Consent Decrees, and Budget Overruns
Critics have also raised surveillance concerns. ShotSpotter records constantly, according to a 2015 ACLU interview with ShotSpotter CEO Ralph Clark. A February New York Police Department report found human voices can’t trigger an alert on their own, but voice snippets have appeared in recordings used in court cases just after gunshots, per the same ACLU interview.
A 2019 privacy audit by the NYU Policing Project found the technology could capture voices near its sensors, though the risk of targeted voice surveillance was “extremely low”; SoundThinking adopted nearly all of the audit’s privacy recommendations.
“MPD has not used surveillance in a way that was ethical. That’s why they’re under a consent decree for violating the human rights of Black, brown and Indigenous residents,” Wonsley said.
Asked whether ShotSpotter surveils residents, an MPD spokesperson said, “ShotSpotter does not record voices or video.”
The city council hasn’t received a cumulative report on Minneapolis’ ShotSpotter spending, according to Wonsley; past contracts posted on the council’s website put the total above $3 million since 2014.
“It’s time for us to get a handle on MPD’s overspending, because it’s quite frankly bankrupting our city,” Wonsley said. “ShotSpotter, in my opinion, is not a need.”
Ella Stern is a contributing writer for the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder. She welcomes reader responses at erstern10@gmail.com.